College football games without marching bands are like cookies without milk.

So it disappointed fans to hear that Nebraska will play in tomorrow’s Pacific Life Holiday Bowl at Qualcomm Stadium without its band, which was stuck at home in the snow.

They shouldn’t have worried. By coincidence, a high school marching band from none other than Lincoln, Neb., is in San Diego to perform in tomorrow’s Big Bay Balloon Parade, and it will step in as pre-game and in-game entertainment. The high schoolers flew here while the much-bigger college band was scattered across the snowbound state.

They didn’t seem that nervous yesterday about playing on the bigger stage. Within an hour of finding out about their promotion, they were practicing in a conference room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Mission Valley, then in the parking lot.

Gary Rectenwald, who has coordinated the Holiday Bowl’s high school performances for 19 years, broke the news to the Lincoln Southeast High School marching band in the hotel parking lot around 2 p.m.

“I told them if there was ever a story to be told about being in the right place at the right time, this is it,” Rectenwald said. “The kids just laughed.”

“Everyone freaked out,” said Kayla Krueger, 15, a clarinetist. “We were so excited.”

It’s exciting for the kids, for sure. But even they acknowledged it’s probably more accurate to say the high schoolers will represent the state of Nebraska in the university band’s place, rather than say they’ll replace the band.

Still, they’ll be on the field before the game to play a couple of fight songs, and play music during a nationally televised bowl game against Arizona from seats that had been reserved for the university band.

The high schoolers, all 100 of them, are scrambling to learn “Hail Victory,” “(There’s No) Place Like Nebraska” and “March of the Cornhuskers” — music that the 287-member university band probably plays in its sleep.

The high school band has played “Hail Victory” in public exactly once, for parents and patrons of a grocery store. They have never played the others.

“It’s kind of overwhelming,” said drum major Emma Trewhitt, 18.

“We have two days to do this,” added Krueger, “and it’s kind of weird because we’re representing the whole state of Nebraska.”

Krueger can appreciate how weird the whole situation is. Her 19-year-old brother, Tommy Krueger, was so excited to visit San Diego with his trumpet and the rest of the university’s marching band and to be a part of the Holiday Bowl.

But a blizzard closed Interstate 80 last week, making it difficult for dozens of band members to return to campus for their bus trip to San Diego and forcing university administrators to cancel the trip for everyone’s safety.

“This was not a decision made lightly,” said John Richmond, director of Nebraska’s School of Music. “In the end, the band staff believed it prudent to tell the students to use what little daylight was left this evening to go home and stay there.”

Unlike the university’s marching band, which made its travel plans this month after the Cornhuskers’ last game, the high school band had bought airline tickets months ago to be one of about 15 high school bands in the balloon parade that precedes the Holiday Bowl.

Now, the students also will play in Qualcomm Stadium and in front of many built-in fans.

John O’Reilly, a Carlsbad resident and vice president of Nebraska’s alumni chapter in San Diego, had wondered who might replace the snowed-in band. Now he knows.

“We will have to give them standing O after standing O,” O’Reilly said yesterday.